Afife Swell Statistics, Março: All Swell – Any Wind

The figure shows the range of swells directed at Afife through a typical March, based on 2964 NWW3 model predictions since 2007 (values every 3 hours). The wave model does not forecast wind or surf right at the shore so we have chosen the optimum grid node based on what we know about Afife. In the case of Afife, the best grid node is 27 km away (17 miles).

The rose diagram describes the distribution of swell directions and swell sizes, while the graph at the bottom shows the same thing without direction information. Five colours show increasing wave sizes. The smallest swells, less than 0.5m (1.5 feet), high are coloured blue. These occurred only 5% of the time. Green and yellow illustrate increasing swell sizes and red illustrates biggest swells greater than >3m (>10ft). In either graph, the area of any colour is proportional to how often that size swell happens.

The diagram indicates that the most common swell direction, shown by the biggest spokes, was WNW, whereas the the prevailing wind blows from the NNW. Because the wave model grid is offshore, sometimes a strong offshore wind blows largest waves away from Afife and away from the coast. We combine these with the no surf category of the bar chart. To simplify things we don't show these in the rose plot. Because wind determines whether or not waves are surfable at Afife, you can view an alternative image that shows only the swells that were forecast to coincide with glassy or offshore wind conditions. Over an average March, swells large enough to cause good for surfing waves at Afife run for about 95% of the time.

IMPORTANT: Beta version feature! Swell heights are open water values from NWW3. There is no attempt to model near-shore effects. Coastal wave heights will generally be less, especially if the break does not have unobstructed exposure to the open ocean.